I received a copyright infringement letter about an image on my website

Every so often, one of our clients gets a letter, email, or portal notice from a law firm or “rights enforcement” company claiming that an image on their website is being used without permission, and demanding a payment to make it go away. In the vast majority of cases that we’ve seen, you don’t owe anything, and you don’t need to respond to the sender directly.

A quick note on legal advice

CyberOptik is a web design and digital marketing agency, not a law firm, and nothing in this article is legal advice. What we can do is confirm how the image was sourced (if we added it), pull the license and receipt on file, and give you the documentation and context you need to respond. If a claim escalates, gets complicated, or you’d just feel better having a professional review it, we always recommend running it by a licensed attorney in your state.

How we source images for your website

Every image we place on a website we build or manage is either:

1. Provided directly by you (your own photography, logos, or product shots), or
2. Purchased through a paid, licensed stock image service, with the license held on file.

We do not pull images from free stock sites, Google Image search, Pinterest, competitor websites, or anywhere else that doesn’t come with a real, receipt-backed license. We used to allow some free sources years ago, and this is exactly the kind of situation that pushed us to change that policy. Paid, licensed images with a receipt attached to a real content ID are the only sources we use today.

That matters here, because when a “rights enforcement” letter shows up, the answer is almost always that we already have a valid license for the file they’re claiming was misused.

What these letters usually are

The letter or portal notice you received will typically:

• Claim that a specific image on a specific page of your website is being used without permission.
• Name a “rights holder,” often an individual photographer or illustrator.
• Give you a case ID and a deadline to pay a settlement or “licensing fee,” usually a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
• Direct you to a portal or a link to submit payment or a response.

In many of the cases we’ve reviewed, the “rights holder” listed on the letter is the exact same contributor we already paid when we licensed the image from a legitimate stock service. Once an image is uploaded to a stock platform, that contributor has already agreed to the platform’s license terms, and they’ve already received their royalty when we bought the license. That doesn’t stop some of them (or third-party enforcement companies acting on their behalf) from trying to collect a second time from the buyer.

We take these seriously, and we investigate every single one

What we suggest doing

If a letter, email, or portal notice like this shows up, please do not:

1. Pay anything.
2. Fill out forms on the enforcement company’s portal on your own.
3. Reply to the sender directly.
4. Delete the image or the page until we’ve had a chance to look at it.

Instead, please forward the full letter or notice to our helpdesk and include:

1. The full letter, email, or PDF as you received it. Screenshots are fine too, as long as we can see the case ID, the claimed image, and the deadline.
2. The URL of the page where they’re claiming the image appears.
3. Any deadline listed on the letter, if one is stated (we want to make sure we respond well ahead of it).

From there, we’ll pull the license record for the image, confirm the file ID, check the license terms against how the image was actually used, and provide this to you so you can submit the info if needed.

What happens after you send it to us

Once we have the letter and the page URL, here’s the usual path:

1. We locate the licensed image and pull the original purchase receipt, including the file ID and license type.
2. We confirm the license covers how the image is being used on your site (standard website use, unlimited visitors, etc.).
3. We send you the license documentation so you can submit it through the portal (or reply, depending on how the claim was delivered).

In cases where an image genuinely wasn’t licensed (rare, but possible if it was uploaded by a previous vendor before we took over the site), we’ll tell you honestly and help you figure out the right next step.

Why we’re careful about this

We’ve been building websites since 2002, and we’ve watched this pattern grow more aggressive over the last few years. There’s a whole industry of firms whose entire business is sending these letters at scale, hoping that a percentage of recipients will pay quickly to avoid the hassle. The letters are designed to feel urgent and legally serious, and they often are formatted to look like they came from a court or a law firm.

The best defense is the one we already have in place: only using paid, licensed images with a receipt on file for every site we build and manage. That policy exists specifically so that when one of these letters shows up, we can answer it with documentation instead of a checkbook.